Saturday, March 27, 2010

Ubuntu's future 10.10 operating system is going to make a small, but contentious change to how file sizes are represented. Like most other operating systems using binary prefixes, Ubuntu currently represents 1 kB (kilobyte) as 1024 bytes (base-2). But starting with 10.10, a switch to SI prefixes (base-10) will denote 1 kB as 1000 bytes, 1 MB as 1000 kB, 1 GB as 1000 MB, and so on.

It was first reported that 10.04 Lucid Lynx would make the switch to base-10, but it was eventually delayed tolucid+1 (10.10) as all applications didn't comply with the new units policy and were still using base-2.

Additional implementation guidelines are also outlined: base-10 should be used to represent networkbandwidth and disk sizes while RAM sizes should use base-2. File sizes can either be shown in both base-10 and base-2, only base-10, or a user option to choose between the two (but with base-10 set as the default).

This new counting will finally put them in line with the standard Greek meaning of "kilo" as 1000 and will seek to alleviate the confusion that regular consumers often have when buying a new hard drive. The pros are not exclusive of the cons though, as inconsistencies between different operating systems presents a troubling user experience dilemma. Other new confusions that this would bring are also outlined in the wiki: